


come back to me a while, change your taste in men

by waferkya



Category: Suburra - La Serie | Suburra: Blood on Rome (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-04-05 05:02:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19041667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waferkya/pseuds/waferkya
Summary: The parking lot is dusty and dark, the building is silent. Aureliano squints and focuses his hearing, looking for the tell-tale signs of an ambush, but can’t find any. It unnerves him even more.I'm not saying this is a better ending to season two; it's just, you know, a possibility.





	come back to me a while, change your taste in men

It’s all in the past, and in the past it went like this: _you’ve changed my life_ , one says, and earns a shove and biting insults for his trouble. If Aureliano were the type for a little introspection, he could point out that, thanks to his violent piece of shit father, he never quite grasped the subtle differences between protection and ownership; love and aggression scare him the same amount: they always have, always will. Luckily, soul-searching is not his thing. Otherwise, after everything he’s seen and everything he’s done, he’d have bitten the bullet long ago. Just look at how Lele ended up—

_Don’t go there. Don’t think of that._ Aureliano, the straightest edge in the drawer, takes another long pull from his beer. It tickles his tongue and his throat, and he likes the taste, something unusually round and with a slight bitter tang at the end; he could become a drinker, he thinks. This was Romolo’s favourite brand.

Spadino drained his beer, and it’s been only a couple of minutes. Aureliano glances at him, curious: hands in his lap, chin tilted down, Spadino looks for all the world like a scolded child. Aureliano frowns. He was trying to return a sentiment; it was supposed to be a thing of softness, more meaningful than an apology and deeper than just a thank you, but he can see how Spadino could take it as a death warrant.

When Aureliano loves someone, they end up dead, without fail. Sometimes it takes them years, sometimes only months; he still hasn’t decided which one is more painful.

_It’s all in the past_ , Spadino said, like he was desperate to escape the poison of Aureliano’s affection. Spadino is smart, sharper than the fucking knives he carries in every pocket; of course he knows that it’s a curse, when the last of the Adami says certain things. Of course he knows that it’s a bad omen, when Aureliano only calls _him_ in the middle of the night, only wants to speak to him, always expects to have him at his side.

Spadino must know that he’s been living on borrowed time, waiting for his inevitable death as collateral damage in the shipwreck of Aureliano’s damned existence.

Suddenly, guilt takes over and Aureliano’s throat is a knot. He wants to break something but everything around him is marble and steel and Spadino, who now looks up sharply, like he felt a change of static in the air and he knows something’s up with Aureliano. He always seems to know.

Aureliano grabs his beer. If he’s going to drink or smash the bottle against the counter, he hasn’t decided yet. But that’s when Spadino’s cell goes off with a text, Spadino reads it, and all of a sudden the entire world shrinks to the fact that color is draining from Spadino’s face.

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” but from the look on him, something must be seriously wrong back at home. “But I have to go.”

Aureliano is ready, trying to remember how many rounds are left in his gun and considering the possibility of maybe bringing Nadia along — he’d hate to get her hurt but she’ll hate being left out even more, and chew his ears off for days, — and when he asks, “Do I come with you?”, it’s only a formality.

Except Spadino freezes where he’s grabbing his jacket, he looks Aureliano in the eye and says: “No. I’ll call you later.”

Aureliano didn’t know his heart could be broken for reasons other than death and destruction.

He stays. Spadino walks away. Aureliano can’t stop himself: he takes one step, then another, like he’s trying to follow. Another sip of beer. In the low lights, and with the growing distance, Aureliano could swear the planets and asteroids on Spadino’s shirt are moving, swinging to mock him and his worry.

The countertop is waist-high. Aureliano jumps over it in one, smooth leap. He runs after Spadino and catches up with him just when he’s climbing in his car.

Aureliano slips into the passenger seat and slams his door. Folds his hands in his lap, ready to go. The car doesn’t move. Spadino stares at him, wide-eyed.

“I’ll call you later,” he insists, and Aureliano doesn’t even turn to look at him. “Please—Aureliano, I have to do this alone.”

Aureliano has never been good at doing what he’s told.

“I’m not going anywhere. We’re wasting time,” he tells Spadino, flat and matter-of-factly. Spadino tries a silent, staring challenge, but Aureliano has not lost one of those since he was six. Spadino snorts and starts the car, annoyed.

“Fucking crazy-eyes motherfucker,” he mumbles, loud enough because he wants Aureliano to hear. He takes off with a sudden, unkind acceleration—Aureliano snaps off his seat and then back against it, but he’s smiling, the corners of his mouth disappearing under his beard.

After a moment, Spadino stops pretending to be angry at him.

*

They pull over into the shady parking lot of an even shadier, seedier little lot. It looks abandoned, forgotten by men and God, and Aureliano’s skin prickles with the anticipation of danger. He checks his gun and takes the safety off.

“So, who’s ambushing us tonight?” he asks it like it’s no big deal because, sadly, it isn’t. Not anymore. Spadino bites his lip, uncomfortable.

“You don’t have to go in.”

Aureliano is tired and worried, so he doesn’t bother resisting the urge to roll his eyes. “C’mon, Spadi’. I’m here, I’m coming with. Get on with the program, yeah?”

“He told me to come alone,” Spadino insists, his voice going down an octave, his eyes skittering to the shitty building.

“Yeah, exactly,” Aureliano says, with exaggerated but necessary emphasis. For some unfathomable reason, Spadino still looks unconvinced; does he have a death wish? Aureliano isn’t here to find out.

He’s an asshole, he knows his strengths and has no qualm whatsoever in using them; he reaches out, puts his hand around the back of Spadino’s head and pulls him in. There’s no way in hell to miss Spadino’s sharp intake of breath. Aureliano drinks in the sound and buries it deep under his lungs, just next to the traitorous warmth he felt, a lifetime ago. _You changed my life._

“I’ve got your back,” Aureliano says, barely louder than a murmur. Spadino’s eyes flutter closed for a second, and he licks his lips.

It’s a split-second decision. Aureliano only needs to apply the slightest pressure; he and Spadino were already gravitating towards each other anyway. He tilts his head down so their noses don’t clash, and he touches their foreheads together, squeezing Spadino’s neck.

The weight of the gun in his other hand is a strange comfort.

“You’re getting soft in your old age,” Spadino says when he pulls back. His cheeks are pink, his eyes are shining weirdly. Aureliano blinks back an unwarranted wetness of his own, then he grins.

“Still harder than you,” he says, ignoring the endless possibilities for dirty jokes and climbing out of the car. He slips the gun inside his waistband.

The parking lot is dusty and dark, the building is silent. Aureliano squints and focuses his hearing, looking for the tell-tale signs of an ambush, but can’t find any. It unnerves him even more.

They walk up to the iron door and Aureliano goes to open it, but Spadino stops him with a hand on his arm. Aureliano grinds his teeth, braces for another useless fight, but Spadino is looking at him all serious and concerned: maybe he’s finally going to spit out what they’re here for.

“You remember I told you, I was seeing someone,” Spadino says, and Aureliano nods, robotic and unthinking. “And… you know what it’s like, in my family.”

“Yeah,” Aureliano nods, and it comes out more pained and heartfelt than he intended, because he’s starting to see where tonight’s going and, fuck, it’s making him blind with anger. Spadino must see what Aureliano is thinking, and awards him the tiniest, most long-suffering smile.

“Yeah,” he echoes, his face flat. “Thanks.”

Aureliano doesn’t ask what for. He also doesn’t say: _I will kill every last one of them for you_. Anger messes with his head, and Aureliano can’t see the outlines of things. Affection bleeds into a sudden urge to protect which is no different than aggression that bleeds into violence, and violence has exactly the same face of love.

Whatever.

Aureliano kicks the door open because he’s going a little crazy around the edges and he doesn’t want to scare Spadino off. How stupid is that? He’s done enough heinous shit in front of him already; if Spadino was a delicate flower of any kind, he’d have run for the hills a couple of murders ago.

What does it say about Aureliano, that time and time again he can’t understand why people choose to stick with him, despite _everything_ about him?

Spadino’s cousin Alex is a cockroach; even if Aureliano didn’t know from all the stories Spadino told him, he would’ve smelt it on him anyway. He has an arrogant grin and all the annoying mannerisms of his family, and then there’s the fact that he kidnapped Spadino’s boyfriend and plots to use him to destroy Spadino’s life. Yeah, Aureliano wants to see him dead within the first twenty seconds of their acquaintance. It might be a record.

While Alex drones on his cookie-cutter threats, Aureliano looks at the terrified kid on the opposite side of the room. _Spadino’s boyfriend_. Aureliano should know his name, but he can’t remember it. He’s a scrawny, battered thing and it reminds him, in some ways, of Nadia. Rationally, Aureliano knows he’s not much younger than either of them, but still he looks like an infant, little Red Riding Hood trespassing into the scary part of the forest.

Wide, naive black eyes, narrow shoulders and long, wiry limbs, with brittle bones jutting out under the surface of paper-thin, olive skin. He’s so completely out of place in this room, in the company of these men. Even the bruises and cuts blooming on his face look wrong. He’s one of the good guys, wholesome and starry-eyed. Spadino has never said a word but Aureliano can tell: this is the kind of kid who cherishes time together in a way that’s not fueled by fear of death and loss. He wouldn’t know what to do with a gun, let alone with a situation where he’s been prisoner in a shitty room for days.

“The same things he told me, he’ll tell in front of our whole family,” Alex says, a sick smirk on his face. Spadino looks floored, enraged to a point that’s beyond rage; Aureliano knows that feeling very well, and his hand twitches, eager to reach out and grab Spadino’s wrist, or the sad slope of his shoulder, the tense curve of his neck or the side of his face.

The kid looks like he’s about to cry; he can’t tear his eyes off Spadino, silently begging for forgiveness. Aureliano feels a tug in his chest: it’s compassion, he realizes. This kid is the same as Isabelle. His only mistake is being in love with the wrong fucking person.

Because of Alex, now Spadino will forever be burdened by something that resembles too closely the shameful guilt that Aureliano has to live with. It shouldn’t happen to Spadino. It’s not right. Aureliano was supposed to protect him — Aureliano needs to fix this.

This is the moment where Aureliano realizes that Alex must die. This is the moment where he feels, before he even sees it, Spadino tense up, coiled like a spring, and then move, fast as a whip. Aureliano is already smiling smug, pleased with the promise of Alex’s blood spilling in a sticky, black-red pool on the floor.

But tonight’s a night of revelations, and it’s not Alex’s gut that meets the sharp edge of Spadino’s knife. He buries it in the side of the kid’s neck, and Aureliano feels it like a kick in the stomach; the kid doesn’t have time to scream or move, he can only hear whatever words Spadino is mumbling into his skin, slick with sweat and now blood too.

The kid folds in on himself and Spadino bears it — embraces the weight of his body, which is nothing compared to the weight of his death, — carrying him down, to the floor. Aureliano takes a step sideways, because he can’t see Spadino’s face but he needs to, and there it is: the shock, the pain, the self-hatred and the helplessness.

Aureliano was supposed to protect him.

Spadino doesn’t let the horror of what he’s just done penetrate his skin just yet. He forces himself to let go of the kid’s body — not gone yet, still choking on blood, but there’s no way he’ll be saved — and gets up, stares coldly at Alex and says, “Make him talk now.”

Aureliano doesn’t know what to do with himself. When Spadino walks out, he follows without a second glance to Alex, to the dying body on the floor.

Spadino’s hands are shaking and bloody; he can’t get the keys out of his jacket. Aureliano steps up to him, grabs his arm: Spadino is so out of it, he yells and thrashes against him, trying to pull back, so it’s only natural that Aureliano would wrap an arm around his shoulders and tug him in, squeezing and staring into the distance, ignoring punches and kicks until Spadino fists his hands at the back of Aureliano’s jacket, squeezing back. Spadino holds onto a handful of leather for a quick eternity, until his labored breathing evens out against Aureliano’s chest.

When he pulls back, his eyes are dry but he looks wrecked and his hands are still shaking.

Aureliano drives them both back to Ostia. Words are useless.

*

He should go to the hotel, but his hands at the wheel disagree: Aureliano cruises through the old city center, along the seafront, and clicks the button on his keychain that opens the gate to his old family house. If Spadino finds it weird or ill-advised, it doesn’t show on his face.

Aureliano parks behind the villa, just to be safe. Outside, everything is properly silent, except for the crashing and breathing of the sea.

Spadino is already at the door. Aureliano catches up after a moment, turns the key into the lock and steps in first. The house is empty and dark — not that different from how it’s always been. Aureliano looks around, sees only pain and death looming from every corner, and the air catches in his throat. Spadino bumps his shoulder as he walks by, making a beeline for the kitchen.

Once more, and for the last time tonight, Aureliano follows.

The lights in the kitchen are harsh and cold. Spadino is at the sink, scrubbing the blood off his hands, hard enough that it’s like he’s trying to get rid of his skin and muscles and bones as well. Aureliano finds more beer in the fridge, opens two bottles without asking. They sit at the table, staring out of the window at the sea and the sky, equally black in the distance.

Aureliano is lost with himself, marveling that the thought of bailing on Spadino never occurred to him, not even in a fleeting moment of weakness and fear. He witnessed his best friend murder someone he loved in cold blood, and didn’t flinch for a second. The loyalty Aureliano had for Spadino at the beginning of this night is still there, unfazed; it might have grown, even.

Something’s wrong in his head, Aureliano knows this. It doesn’t bother him enough to care, he concludes, downing his beer in two, long pulls.

He stands to get more beer for both of them and notices that Spadino isn’t meeting his eyes. It’s not ideal. Aureliano is not used to this and, as he hates change, he can feel something nibbling at the fences of his self control. It won’t be long until the walls of this house will start closing in on him, so Aureliano suddenly turns around and walks out, back into the night.

He stops when he’s almost at the water’s edge. Spadino is not too far behind.

Aureliano sits down in the sand and thinks he did well, coming here. He can’t imagine being anywhere else but in front of the sea, with Spadino at his side, trying to bring some order to the chaos; trying not to think of the future.

But the silence is not a comfort this time, and the beer’s only loosening up whatever restraints Aureliano had managed to put on his bad temper. _I will kill anyone for you, to keep you safe, to make you happy,_ is the only thing he wants to say, but doesn’t know how: it’s too much.

It’s been a long time when Spadino finally asks, in the smallest possible voice, “Do I disgust you?”

Aureliano squeezes the neck of his beer bottle so hard he feels his own nails digging into his palm.

“You don’t,” he says, hating that he doesn’t know any better words; he needs something stronger, more absolute than this. He needs to make promises that Spadino will believe but all he can think is a pathetic litany of _no no no fuck no please no no no_. “You don’t, okay? You have to believe me. Spadi’—”

“I killed him,” Spadino says, easy and almost light, like he’s talking of this new couch he just bought. “I fucking murdered him, left him to choke on his own blood, just to save myself — this shitty little empire I don’t even know if I want — and I — I don’t — Teo just _loved_ me, Aurelia’, and I did too — and I still killed him.”

Aureliano is resolute. “This is on your cousin.”

“My knife, my fault,” Spadino says, shaking his head. He squeezes his eyes with the heels of his hands; Aureliano can’t tell if he’s biting back tears or trying to push his eyes back into his skull as a form of punishment.

Guilt in Aureliano turns outwards, it becomes rage and vengeance; in Spadino, it moves inwards and it looks like despair and self-destruction. Aureliano hates it.

Words are still failing him, and they’re both out of beer. Aureliano hasn’t eaten in a while and the alcohol on an empty stomach, the scent of the sea, the chill in the air — it’s all driving him a little crazy. But mostly it’s Spadino, with his face so pale he’s almost glowing in the moonlight; his lanky frame shaking from the cold and the stress and the fear; the oversize jacket, the skinny jeans, the impossible haircut.

Aureliano doesn’t have words but he has hands; as rough as they are, he figures it’s better than nothing, when he cups them around Spadino’s face. He has knees, to bury in the sand on each side of Spadino’s legs; he presses their foreheads together, a mirror to their moment in the car, before an already shitty night turned out to be even worse.

Spadino is cold as fuck, and Aureliano moves closer, hoping to warm him up. The sand gives in a little, he almost loses his balance but it’s okay, because it turns out that Aureliano’s nose can slot very nicely right next to Spadino’s.

The fan of Spadino’s impossibly long lashes brushes against Aureliano’s cheek, and Aureliano, still without any words to offer, has instead the right spark of madness and fear and confusion to tilt his head just right. It’s only a small matter of geometry combined with gravitational pull, their lips meeting halfway in a hungry, desperate, end-of-the-world thing of a kiss.

Spadino grabs Aureliano’s jacket, Aureliano’s shirt, Aureliano’s bony hip and pulls; Aureliano bites his lip to spell out all the things he can’t quite put in a row otherwise. Aggression and love are still tied up together and tough to tell apart, but suddenly it doesn’t seem so important, being able to see the difference: Spadino takes it all, always have, always will.

_Fuck off_ and _for real_ : nothing about Aureliano seems to frighten him, ever.

Aureliano leans in too enthusiastically and Spadino topples back into the sand, laughing breathlessly; they are now pressed against each other all over, and Aureliano is burning up. Spadino looks up into his eyes and suddenly he can’t breathe. He bares his neck and Aureliano is not the type to turn down an invitation.

“Motherfu—God, oh my God, _Aureliano_ ,” Spadino moans, and he’s shaking for entirely different reasons now. Aureliano presses a line of kisses up his long neck, bites at his earlobe and finally grins up at Spadino.

“Keep praying. I like it.”

Spadino gasps out a strange bit of laughter. There’s affection. Then he grabs Aureliano by the hair and pulls him up into a demanding, bruising kiss. There goes aggression, as well.

Aureliano grinds his hips down, feels the weight and the heat of a dick hardening against his own, and he is absolutely sure he just saw the netherworld for a second.

This is childhood home. This is the place where his sister died, bloody and scared.

This is his land, his sand, his sea; this is the place, the only place, where Aureliano can start building something. Spadino is the only one who can see him through.  


**Author's Note:**

> SWEET BOYS, MURDER BOYS, LITTLE BALLS OF FLUFF. so, this time the title is 100% owed to Placebo, and the other thing I wanted to say is that I reject the notion that Spadino is supposed to be 18 in the series. like, what. no.


End file.
